debiman wrote:What worries me is that they might simply take these "Help me!" threads to another forum, knowing full well that here on fdn there's only one possible reaction.

That is unavoidable. I have seen newbies post in the Mint forum [yes, Mint!] who, having been told to [quite justifiably] go back to Windows, traverse over to Linux Forums to whinge there.

I have also seen Debian sid promoted on various fora as a 'rolling release distro' and a great solution instead of, e.g., Ubuntu LTS. There is more misinformation out there than there are knowledgeable Debian users to quash it.

FDN is not as strict as it used to be. This place has a reputation for being rather hardline, strict and occasionally rude, but it has softened in recent months. As more of the old school posters switch distro or altogether disappear, a newer generation is eking its way in, one which either doesn't care for or comprehend the Debian Way. One which is not used to learning, but quick fixes. I'm not talking about bester, he's a 'special case': if FDN were Greenwich Palace, he would be the court jester.

Lysander wrote:FDN is not as strict as it used to be. This place has a reputation for being rather hardline, strict and occasionally rude, but it has softened in recent months.

That would depend on your perspective. As per your post "One Year of Debian", you are rather new here. Things really started to go down hill around 2011. Other threads related to the decline are here. It was a huge schism and exodus from this forum. Then systemd further drove away knowledgeable users. This forum is now pretty much an empty shell . . . no offense to the few here doing their best to keep it alive.

golinux wrote:That would depend on your perspective. As per your post "One Year of Debian", you are rather new here. Things really started to go down hill around 2011. Other threads related to the decline are here. It was a huge schism and exodus from this forum. Then systemd further drove away knowledgeable users. This forum is now pretty much an empty shell . . . no offense to the few here doing their best to keep it alive.

Troll wrote:...developers are targeting their applications at distros, rather Linux and its libraries...

On one hand, the quote summarizes this thread's topic: when one utilizes alien repos in lieu of compiling from source, bad things happen, because each distro makes changes in order to fit their project's particular needs. (edit:) Troll attributes this to "fragmentation," which I've seen defined several different ways; in this context, I think fragmentation can be best defined as "focusing on the specific distribution," and not as "[over]abundant choice." Choice, on the other hand, is the whole point of the Linux philosophy.

Distros also insist on modifying applications they ship - usually making them incompatible with the original

In addition, it's interesting to note that, six years ago, the issue of "software incompatibility for the sake of the distro" was discussed in great detail, and only now are we realizing its effects. What it leaves out is that 1) source codes are now requiring certain, undesirable software, due to the direction of major distros (eg, xfce and dbus); and 2) some source code can bypass features that distros leave enabled by default (eg, xfce and systemd). Both of those are two sides of the same issue, though: convenience over choice. It is admittedly a pain to compile any desktop environment from source; understandably, most people use something easier -- like a deb.

My hope is that Debian commits to software choice for the long haul, and continues to give users reasonable alternatives to undesirable programs (cough, systemd, cough), instead of taking the easy, albeit cohesive, route like other major distributions. I'll repeat ad nauseum that, if no one advocates for something, it will, eventually, be lost. If ever Debian abandons user choice, whether to imitate other projects or to maintain a "cohesive" distribution, I will abandon Debian. I hope that doesn't happen.

bester69 wrote:There is nothing to install in linux, from time to time i go to google searching for something fresh to install in linux, but, there is nothing

Who can be bothered sitting at a terminal interface digging away at config files every time they want to do something, seriously.. its 2011.

GUI's were created for user convenience. What would you rather do? Type tar xvf archive.tar /home/user/Desktop/ or *click click click*?I know what I'd rather do. I have better things to do with my time than sitting at a 1970's terminal interface.

This. After 7 years, a little has changed, and we still have that "do-it-the-hard-way" mindset. Thats why Ubuntu is still the most popular distro, even though it's inferior choice on a technical level than Debian.What it does well, is attracting noobs, those newbies who would like to try Linux.I would like to make another thread for this, though.

Who can be bothered sitting at a terminal interface digging away at config files every time they want to do something, seriously.. its 2011.

oh, really?i bet they already said that in 2004, nay, 1999, and every year since.and will continue to do so until the end of time.only teenagers talk like that, for whom any timespan that reaches beyond either edge of their puberty is incomprehensible.

it's also an incorrect and deliberately polarizing statement.incorrect because editing config files is often a very effective way to ..., erm, configure things, which usually has the effect that you do it once, and no more after that.polarizing because one can very well also use a graphical editor to manually edit config files. it's not "All CLI" or "All GUI".

GUI's were created for user convenience. What would you rather do? Type tar xvf archive.tar /home/user/Desktop/ or *click click click*?I know what I'd rather do. I have better things to do with my time than sitting at a 1970's terminal interface.

This. After 7 years, a little has changed, and we still have that "do-it-the-hard-way" mindset.[/quote]wrong, wrong, wrong.this has nothing to do with masochism, or being backward.i have a gui filemanager, and use it a lot, but after i half managed tab completion and a few very basic shell features, i more and more often open the terminal instead because it's just faster for a particular task. more precise. ad-hoc scripting, not yet-another-batch-gui-utility-plugin-installing.

golinux wrote:That would depend on your perspective. As per your post "One Year of Debian", you are rather new here.

Not only that, I seem to be echoing the sentiments of those from many years back who were also rather new here at that time.

golinux wrote:Things really started to go down hill around 2011. Other threads related to the decline are here. It was a huge schism and exodus from this forum. Then systemd further drove away knowledgeable users. This forum is now pretty much an empty shell . . . no offense to the few here doing their best to keep it alive.

What this shows, more than anything else, is that complaints relating to the decline of forum X are commonplace on the internet. Forums have their heyday, most notably recognisable by quality of information posted, knowledge of posters, rate of post turnover and helpfulness and efficiency of responses. But more than this, what makes any forum great is the extent to which the forum content fulfills that forum's raison d'etre. In my experience, internet forums tend to have what is generally regarded as one - and one only - peak period of indeterminate length after which its decline starts, and subsequently it will be difficult - if ever possible - for a similar state to be reached again.

The reasons for this could be hyposthesised via an unquantifiable combination of causes which include, but are not limited to, new trends; new social/societal attitudes; displacement of interests; changing belief systems and moralities; the superceding of outmoded concepts; lack of novelty; lack of originality; personal/professional commitments and the often uncontrollable influence of other extenuating factors which can change the forum's original focal cause permanently. It doesn't matter if the forum is FDN or 4chan - once some of these factors come into play which immeasurably distort the main cause which the forum was originally set up to support, users will forever lament that forum's better days. For the newer posters these can be counted in months, whereas the longer-acquainted can count them in years.

This is the original post, and is what the topic is supposed to be about.

dasein wrote:As of the date of this posting, one of the most common questions/problems involves people wanting to, or trying to, install packages across Debian's various releases, or worse, across "Debian-based" distros.

Answer: This is a very risky thing to attempt, and is generally regarded as a bad idea for all but the most advanced Debian users.

Debian Wiki wrote:Backporting (recompiling and repackaging) is the only safe way to install packages from Debian Sid or Debian Testing on a Debian stable system. Do not install such packages without backporting. Attempting to "mix" releases, especially by updating your sources.list file, is a sure way to break your system. Recovery in these cases usually involves restore from backup. (Emphasis added)

Lysander wrote:The reasons for this could be hyposthesised via an unquantifiable combination of causes which include, but are not limited to, new trends; new social/societal attitudes; displacement of interests; changing belief systems and moralities; the superceding of outmoded concepts; lack of novelty; lack of originality; personal/professional commitments and the often uncontrollable influence of other extenuating factors which can change the forum's original focal cause permanently. It doesn't matter if the forum is FDN or 4chan - once some of these factors come into play which immeasurably distort the main cause which the forum was originally set up to support, users will forever lament that forum's better days. For the newer posters these can be counted in months, whereas the longer-acquainted can count them in years.

I decided to try unstable (code name sid) on the test laptop. No mixing and matching.

I emphasise that I have a recycled laptop that has been purchased solely for trying out distributions and configurations. The laptop has a separate /home and / partition so reinstalling is easy. I do the full 'jwz backup' thing when I do real work on this machine (not often )

I did a fresh installation using wired connection / stable netinstall, advanced installer tasksel enable base only -> upgrade to testing -> upgrade to unstable to minimise the total download. No point upgrading Gnome desktop packages twice. At that point I cleaned out the sources.list file and I now have...

No 'updates' because Sid is all updates. No 'security' because you are relying on patches from the upstream maintainers, security team do Stable.

I then installed xorg gm3 and gnome to bring a usable desktop together with laptop-mode-tools and some other stuff.

Issues so far: Some bug alerts around VLC when installing minitube, but is working. At present the eclipse IDE can't be installed from repos so I just used the tar.gz package from eclipse.org. The gnome-flashback-session package results in a desktop session where menus never disappear. Googling tells me that the flashback session has issues with Gnome versions above 3.8, so I've removed flashback and will just wait that one out. Might see what bugs have been logged. There is one package db5.1-util that is currently held back. Leaving a dist-upgrade for a few days while I see what is going on with that. Nautilus would not start on first login. Google suggested that I delete the appropriate config file from my home partition (which dates from Wheezy install) and that solved the problem.

If people don't want to do the sort of 'housekeeping' and research I've outlined above, well, the evidence points to installing Stable doesn't it?

By this point, I imagine the thread can be locked. The heart of it is in the first post, anyway, and was only recently necrosaged in response to a troll post. It would be a mercy kill.

I do find it pretty baffling how users still repomix and complain about the results, or ignore the OP when shared. The questions are just sad to read now. Reminds me of the questions in the Zuckerberg Congressional hearing memes.http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/new ... 96/cc2.jpg

bester69 wrote:There is nothing to install in linux, from time to time i go to google searching for something fresh to install in linux, but, there is nothing

n_hologram wrote:By this point, I imagine the thread can be locked. The heart of it is in the first post, anyway, and was only recently necrosaged in response to a troll post. It would be a mercy kill.

Indeed. It was dasein's thread and he updated it mostly. The point has been made - and made well.